Fatcats and Democrats

It began with a faculty argument about the congressional vote to bail out the Chrysler Corporation back in 1979. It was a small point, really: just a thread out of place. But once I got to pulling on it, more and more of the prevailing wisdom about American political parties came unraveled.

Conversation in the coffee room had shifted off basketball and onto a topic of concern to us as professional political scientists: Which party was behind the rapid increase in federal spending? The debate followed predictable lines. The Republican professor contended that the Democrats with their welfare programs were to blame, and the Democratic professor retorted that the Republicans were just as bad, having loaded the budget with subsidies for the well-to-do and corporate welfare “like the bailout of the Chrysler Corporation.” The argument then headed into the murky business of trying to decide whether pro-rich or pro-poor spending was a larger fraction of the budget. No one came out a winner.

JP

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James L. Payne

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It began with a faculty argument about the congressional vote to bail out the Chrysler Corporation back in 1979. It was a small point, really: just a thread out of place. But once I got to pulling on it, more and more of the prevailing wisdom about American political parties came unraveled.

Conversation in the coffee room had shifted off basketball and onto a topic of concern to us as professional political scientists: Which party was behind the rapid increase in federal spending? The debate followed predictable lines. The Republican professor contended that the Democrats with their welfare programs were to blame, and the Democratic professor retorted that the Republicans were just as bad, having loaded the budget with subsidies for the well-to-do and corporate welfare “like the bailout of the Chrysler Corporation.” The argument then headed into the murky business of trying to decide whether pro-rich or pro-poor spending was a larger fraction of the budget. No one came out a winner.